Mathematical Puzzles to Puzzle You

Our body needs regular exercise to stay fit and in shape. Similarly, our brain needs regular exercise to stay fit. Riddles, conundrums, crosswords and puzzles with some logic and maths problems thrown in, are guaranteed to exercise your head and add fibre to your life. In the previous post we have explored how to develop effective thinking through puzzles

Puzzle 1: Clock Puzzle

A patient was waiting for her turn from quite some time. Sitting uncomfortably in the doctor’s waiting room, she stared at the clock on the wall. She got bored of waiting for what seem to be a very long time.

To divert her mind from the reason for which she is visiting the doctor, she started to invent little puzzles to solve.

Estimating the length of the minute hand of the clock to be 4 inches, she calculated the distance the hand had travelled around the clock since she had first arrived to be 15 inches.

How long had she been waiting? How did she manage to calculate this distance?

Once she solved this, her attention got diverted to some books lying in the book shelf. She came up with book worm puzzle – click here to read further

Puzzle 2: Speed and Distance Puzzle

Raja’s office is 9 km from his home. One day, he decides to jog to work in order to increase his fitness. He estimates the journey time to be little over 1 hour 45 minutes.

After jogging for some distance his energy begins to fade and he realizes that he will not be able to run the whole distance. Raja sees a passing taxi and he thanks god that now he can reach office in time. Raja hails the cab and completes his journey, arriving at work one hour 10 minutes earlier than he had anticipated.

Assuming Raja could run at 1/6 the speed of the cab, how far did he run before he hailed the taxi?

Hey Vineet,
You have done some great work here. I liked how how are using vedic mathematics to solve problems. I am going learn more about vedic mathematics and teach the math lessons to students here at Sunnyvale in California